In this News-Leader file photo a hawk pins a starling at Campbell Avenue and Chestnut Expressway. / Dean Curtis/News-Leader

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A University of Montana bird expert said Springfield’s weekend starling death incident was likely caused by a hawk chasing down the birds for a meal.

About 100 starlings died when they flew into the path of a small pickup truck Saturday morning on South Fremont Avenue, an incident witnessed by a Rogersville motorist driving behind the truck.

Erick Greene, an ornithologist with the University of Montana’s Division of Biological Sciences and Wildlife Biology program, saw News-Leader reports about the bird deaths and in an email described the most likely scenario. Ironically, the News-Leader also published a photo Monday showing a Cooper’s hawk that had captured a starling along Chestnut Expressway.

“Here is what I strongly suspect happened,” Greene wrote. “There was probably a hawk chasing the starlings (possibly a Merlin, Cooper’s Hawk, or a Peregrine Falcon, or some other raptor that feeds on starlings). Starlings do occur in huge flocks, and they are usually pretty good about avoiding flying into things when they just flying about.

“However, when a raptor is locked on to them, they fly in tight little balls (or truly huge big balls!) and fly low and erratically. They twist and turn, and are concentrating more on avoiding the raptor than other things. I suspect that a raptor was hot on their tail, and they flew low down across the road just when the truck was passing by.

“Starlings are well known for this behavior, and when they are being chased their huge flocks can form truly spectacular spectacles of coordinated flights, with split second twisting and turning. So I strongly suspect that this is what was going on. The starlings were most likely flying really low and fast to try to get away from a hawk hot in pursuit, and they had the misfortune to cross the road just as the truck was driving past.”

Greene offered several links to starling flight behavior that show how they respond to a predatory bird attack: